The Most Dangerous Game
by Allard-Liao
Summary: A young woman is abducted for a hunt. But, there is more to her than meets the eye.
1. Introductions

Chapter 1: Introductions

A young-ish woman, apparently in her late twenties, early thirties, awoke. Groggily at first, but she became fully alert as she took in her surroundings. This was not downtown Madrid…nor was it Mexico City. Nor was it any place she could recollect. She twisted her head to look behind her and to her sides. Her eyes locked on the one window, which was ovular and currently showed a star field. That was bad. That meant that she was on a spacecraft that she had no memory of boarding. She tried to remember anything before falling asleep, but she didn't even remember going to sleep. Last she could recall, she was about to crack the neck of her target…no, she **did** crack his neck… and then there was a blinding white flash. She could remember nothing from between the flash and now. She started to get up from the spot where she was lying, but she found that she was tied to a table. A blow to the back of her head let her know that whoever had put her there hated the fact that she had woken up. The blow knocked her unconscious.

She awoke again to the sound of rushing wind. She looked down and saw a jungle soaring up at her. She immediately calculated that she was already at terminal velocity. So, unless her situation changed, when she hit the ground, she would become a neat red smear on the forest floor. That was when she noticed the device on her chest. It was certainly not human in origin. It was also beeping; slowly at first, but gradually growing more rapid. She closed her eyes and prayed that, if the device was a bomb, it would go off first; if it wasn't, she prayed that she wouldn't feel the impact with the ground.

She suddenly began decelerating, but, when she opened her eyes, she saw that she hadn't hit the ground. She looked up and saw that whoever had kidnapped her had given her a parachute before shoving her out of the ship. She also noted that the parachute had deployed too late for a perfect landing as she came down hard against the ground. She could not stop herself from crying out in pain as her right leg shattered and her left dislocated from the impact. She managed to relocate her left leg before blacking out from the pain.

She woke up a couple of hours later. Her situation had changed without her approval while she was out. She was sitting against the wall of a cave, a small fire was in front of her, and a Russian soldier was sitting in front of it, his back mostly toward her. She took in his equipment and his features and spoke to him in Russian. _"Spetsnaz. I'd guess about ten, fifteen years of service so far."_

He whipped around in surprise, and she could understand why. She looked Native American, and, as such, she would not be expected to know anything about the Russian military. _"How could you know that?"_

"_Your equipment told me what you were. AS VAL 9x39 mm silenced assault rifle and Dragunov SVU sniper rifle. Weapons assigned only to Russian special forces units." _She pointed at him._ "Your scars and the state of medal tell of how long you have served. Long enough to have earned a few commendations, but too long to care about them anymore."_

"_Not bad. I will have served twelve years this February, if I had not been dropped into this godforsaken jungle,"_ he replied as he looked outside the mouth of the cave. He then looked at her, held out his hand to shake and continued,_ "I'm Grigori. Grigori Petrenkov."_

"Isabella Sesenta," the woman replied as she shook his hand. _"I've heard of your family. Supposedly, your great-grandfather planted a Russian flag on the roof of the Reichstag near the end of the Second World War."_

"_Indeed he did. We still have the Bosch assault rifle he captured at home, mounted on the fireplace mantle."_ They were silent for a moment; then Grigori began to reach toward Isabella's legs. Before he could get his hand near, a curved sword was at his throat. _"I was just going to check on my attempt to patch up your leg."_ That appeared to smooth her ruffled feathers, as she replaced her sword to a sheath hidden up the back of her denim jacket.

As he peeled back the dressing he had made around her shattered leg, Isabella saw exactly how severe the wound had been. Shards of bone projected out of her leg in at least three places. Even with a quick visual inspection, she could tell that her right leg was still useless; at least, it was useless for walking. _"Damn."_

"_It seems to be healing rather well. Still, here."_ He held out a makeshift crutch made out of a tree branch. _"Made it for you while you were out cold."_

"_Thanks,"_ she replied as she accepted the proffered crutch. She stood, slowly, and tested the crutch's ability to hold her up. It did so nicely.

Picking up his weapons, Grigori said, _"I saw a couple of other people get dropped nearby. Let's see if we can find them, and then we can try to find out where the Hell we are,"_ as he began walking toward the mouth of the cave.

"On another planet," Isabella mumbled as she began to limp after him. Incredibly, they found a larger cave that was more a hollow in the wall of a cliff overlooking a river. In that hollow, several other people from diverse backgrounds were gathered and talking amongst themselves. When they noticed the two new arrivals, they all swung weapons into line with Isabella and Grigori. "Whoa! Easy boys, we're all friends here," she cautioned in English as she held up her hand in the "stop" signal.

The leader, an American armed with an AA-12, put his weapon in a patrol pose and stated, "My name is Royce. If you want to live, come with me. We're being hunted…"

"By large humanoids armed with plasma-based and melee weapons, right?" Isabella supplied.

"How the Hell do you know?"


	2. Revelations

Chapter 2: Revelations

"I've seen them before." She sat down with a pained grunt against the rock of the hollow. "I once spent time at a set of Mayan ruins where my father was leading an archaeological dig. He and his team died when a race of serpent-like aliens was discovered in a secret temple a few hundred feet beneath the ground on the site. To make matters worse, these humanoids, hunters in their culture, arrived and began killing both humans and the serpents. I survived by remaining unarmed and setting traps for the serpents. The hunters didn't go after anyone who was unarmed."

"So, why are you here if you aren't a warrior?" asked a tall German. Isabella could tell that he was a GSG-9 from his equipment.

"Oh, I am a warrior," Isabella replied as she drew the curved sword.

"A falcata? Where the hell did you get one of those? And in such good condition?"

"This one was made especially for me." She flipped it over and held out the hand-guard to the others. "Note the jaguar, my family's patron animal."

"The guy who made it must have a real liking for you."

"My dad's coworker. He was more on the historical reconstruction side of the coin. My dad was the digger of the two." She looked longingly at the blade and sighed as she resheathed it.

Royce shouldered his weapon and said, "Well, then. If you have indeed seen these things, then you know how we have to keep on the move. If you can't keep up, then you'll be left behind."

"Oh, I can keep up with any man, even if I'm injured."

"We'll see."

The group moved out, with Royce, Grigori, and Hans (the GSG-9) forming the vanguard and Isabella, an Israeli woman named Isabelle, and a couple of others bringing up the rear. While Isabella was right in her assessment that she could keep up with the men, she could only just do so, and Isabelle slowed slightly to help Isabella keep pace with the group. After a few minutes, Isabella asked, "I guess that you don't agree wholeheartedly with Royce's 'my way or the highway' philosophy?"

"No."

"So, how long have you been on this planet?"

"Well, I would think that it's been about two, maybe three months."

"No transport off of this rock, eh?"

"None that **they** don't control."

"Any plan to 'liberate' those ships?"

"Whoever it is that leads the hunts has a way to self-destruct their ship before it reaches orbit. We'd have to take him out in order to leave, along with all the other hunters."

"That shouldn't be too tough. After all, I killed one of the hunters that ambushed my dad's dig using a pickaxe." She suddenly shoved Isabelle forward, causing one hunter's plasma blast to miss its intended target. It did, however, burn her leg off just below the hip. As she fell to the ground in pain, she growled out, "Get out of here. I'll hold him off." Reluctantly, the others acquiesced, with Grigori and Isabelle leaving last and pulling up the rear of the amended column. Isabella slowly pulled herself to a quasi-standing position by leaning against a tree.

Seconds later, a large, invisible shape dropped down a few feet in front of her with a thud. She drew her falcata as it began to de-cloak. What materialized in front of her was not like the Predators she was used to. Its skin was a blackish green rather than the tan-green mix that was the coloration of the Predators. Its wrist only extended one long blade rather than the two shorter ones she had become used to seeing in the Predators' possession. However, it was the mask that had the most visible difference. Rather than a "Y"-shaped section of armor under the eyes and two plates of armor beside the vertical of the "Y", this hunter's mask appeared to be based off of a Greek Corinthian helmet. Interestingly, it didn't cover the hunter's entire face, as did the mask of the Predators. From the gaps in the mask jutted two greatly enlarged, by Predator standards, lower mandibles covered in even darker skin than the body.

The hunter roared and stalked forward. When it was only three feet away, where she fully noticed its eight-foot height, it swung its blade at her, and she parried it almost effortlessly. They continued like that for nearly a minute before Isabella feigned a lunge at the hunter's gut. When he moved his blade to block the blow, she suddenly swung the falcata upward into the bottom of his mask, knocking it away. The face that looked back at her was by far the most grotesque face she had ever seen on anything that was still alive. Its eyes blazed with an unearthly red fire; its skin was jet black. The rest of its face, well, she couldn't find words to describe it. And she didn't have the time to do so, as it used her moment of confusion to run her through with its blade. She could feel it pass completely through her, cleaving through her heart, and impale the tree she was leaning against.


	3. Secrets Revealed

Chapter 3: Secrets Revealed

Before he could draw back his blade, Isabella demonstrated why she was still alive. Though she never liked showing off in front of others, she determined that her situation demanded it. She focused on calling her true soul and, in an instant, an anthropomorphic jaguar stood before the hunter. She rammed her blade up through his chest and chin, ending with her hand buried in his chest and the tip of her falcata sticking out of the top of his head. His dieing look of surprise said it all. She then ripped her sword out, splitting his head and chest wide open in a spray of iridescent green gore. His body started to fall over, but it was kept on its feet by the blade impaled in the tree. She cut off his arm just above where the blade's housing was mounted, letting the body fall the rest of the way to the ground. She resheathed the falcata and tried to pull the blade that was pinning her to the tree out of it. However, she found that the hunter had been so strong that even her enhanced strength could not pull it out. "Great." She applied all of her strength and snapped the blade out of its housing, thus opening the way for her to push herself forward off the blade.

She fell to the ground, as she did not have enough time to either brace herself against or bleed away her forward momentum. She shaved away the cauterization the hunter's plasma had caused on the stump of her leg, crawled over to the hunter's corpse, and began to feast on his flesh. It tasted like shit, but it would do. She forced herself to ignore the taste, and, before she knew it, she had already ripped away and gulped down most of the hunter's heavy musculature. Feeling rather full, she crawled back over to the tree and sat against it to sleep off her meal.

She awoke about four hours later with her leg almost completely restored; now missing only the foot. A few minutes later, even that problem was rectified, and she set about finding the others. Their scent, though faint, was still strong enough to follow, and she did so.

In just under an hour, she caught up with the group, but she stayed out of sight. After all, her kind wasn't entirely accepted in the world. However, she would have to reveal herself very soon. She saw that one of the hunters was stalking the group. "Hell. If I'm going to reveal what I am, I might as well do it with style," she whispered to herself. She climbed into the nearest tree and began leaping from tree to tree until she was close enough to the hunter, who had begun firing on the humans. They dove to cover and began spraying inaccurate fire in return. They were so inaccurate that the hunter did not even have to move to dodge; a couple of rounds even clipped the branch Isabella was standing on. She drew her falcata and pounced on the hunter, driving her blade into his right shoulder as she landed and hung on for dear life.

As he roared in pain, the humans stopped firing and peered over their pieces of cover to observe the fight. As the hunter spun around, trying to dislodge Isabella, Royce caught sight of her and asked, "What the Hell is that?"

She drew out her blade and stabbed the hunter again with a growling grunt. Grigori was the first to notice all the details and make the connection. _Wait. Female. That denim jacket. That forward-curved sword. There is only one girl that we know with that ensemble._ But, he kept his thoughts to himself and was content to watch her fight.

She then ripped her blade out through the hunter's back and dropped off to slash her blade through his hamstrings. As he fell to his knees, she flipped the blade and delivered a backhand slash across his back. He growled in defiance, but she knew that he was done. She walked around to stand in front of him and stared holes through his mask; she wanted him to remember what had taken him down. She saw the plasma cannon begin charging up, so she punched the cannon, causing it to fire wide to the right. Before it could fire again, she grabbed it and tore it off of his shoulder before throwing it over her shoulder, never to be used again. She raised her arm and swung the falcata through his neck as he extended his arm blade and ran her through. With a gurgling growl, his head slowly tilted backward and then fell completely off of what remained of his neck, which spurted blood in sympathy.

She breathed heavily, out of breath from both the effort of killing the hunter and its last blow, which knocked the wind out of her. She ripped out the arm blade and collapsed as it nicked her spinal cord. She heard the charging handle of a weapon being cocked and looked up; only to find herself looking directly down the barrel of Royce's AA-12.

"Listen. I don't know what the fuck you are, but you had better give me a damn good reason not to blow your brains out, right now."

She was about to speak when Grigori walked up and pushed the weapon's barrel to the side. He knelt down and said, "Isabella."

She smiled. "Well, well, well. You managed to see through my jaguar form. I might as well stop all of my lies. First and foremost, my name is not Isabella. It's Xena. Second, my dad did not die studying Mayan ruins. He actually died defending his family, me and my mom, from the serpents. The hunters had an arrangement with my people. They would provide us with the technology and know-how to build a civilization, and we would, once every century, provide them with their 'ultimate hunt:' the serpents. The last batch got out of control and began a plague that would have wiped out all life in the region if it were not contained. My father, a werejaguar like me, died as he tore one of the serpents in half. It turned out that they had acidic blood. As it was standing over him, his body melted entirely as he was bathed in acid. The hunters were forced to activate their failsafe: an explosive device that completely destroyed my city."

"So, the hunters have been coming to Earth for a long time?"

"Far longer than I have been alive. They have been coming more often in modern times."

"Guatemala, 1987," Isabella interjected.

"Yes. As well as a few other times. Three others off the top of my head: Los Angeles, 1997; one of them interfered in a drug war between two cartels and the local PD, while a government team tried to capture it. There was one survivor, Lieutenant Michael R. Harrigan, LAPD. Bouvetoya Island, Antarctica, October 2004. Another of the serpent hunts occurred. A satellite owned by Charles Bishop Weyland, billionaire owner of Weyland Industries, discovered a pyramid under the ice. Again, there was only one survivor, their guide, Alexa Woods. Later that month, the hunters' ship crashed outside of a small town in Gunnison County, Colorado, releasing several captive serpents. Not many details came out of that event, other than that Yutani, Weyland's oftentimes business partner, destroyed the town with a nuke, covering it up as a meltdown of the local power plant. There were four survivors, but they were made to disappear shortly afterward. Oh, and, from the LA '97 event, the government official in charge of the capture team gave it the name 'Predator.'"

"Jesus, where'd you get that information?"

"Remember when I said that my father's friend made my falcata for me? Well, he was actually my personal friend, and he had a few dozen of his friends embedded high up in the government. High enough to have access to information that others would prefer not to have even known about, much less have known in their entirety. Yutani was able to keep the information on the Gunnison Incident covered up, except for the military involvement, which went to the government."

"And your friend's friends saw fit to impart this knowledge to you?"

"Well, I was actually called in repeatedly to help them interpret the incident reports. However…"

"Let me guess. You never encountered 'Predators' like these before?"

"Not even close. The ones I'm used to seeing are…"

"Yeah. We know what they look like."

"Well then. I guess that I've imparted all the knowledge I can. What can you tell me about these new hunters?"

"Well, they have sensors that extend beyond any spectrum of light, specifically a sonic sensor. They can fire the blades that are mounted on their arms…"

"The older hunters could do that when they went on serpent hunts."

Royce ignored her interruption. "They are far stronger than the smaller ones. They set traps similar to a hunter's bear trap back home. They come down in threes with their own ship that waits near their camp…"

"Then let's go get it."

"They can trigger a self-destruct device on that ship."


	4. The Devil's Due

Chapter 4: The Devil's Due

"Screw waiting. Let's get to their camp, kill the last of them, take that ship, and get the fuck home."

Everyone turned and stared at the outburst from Grigori. He was holding his AS VAL at the ready position. Royce and Xena smiled. "You all heard what he said. Let's get going."

Xena and Royce led the way, Isabelle and Grigori behind them, and Hans and the others pulling up the rear. They didn't get far before one of the rear members, an IRA soldier, stepped on one of the aforementioned traps. His scream of pain was answered by a roar of triumph in the distance. Xena trotted back, ripped off what was left of her shirt, knelt down, pulled open the jaws of the trap, and wrapped the torn garment around the wound.

He grabbed her arm and said, "Go. I can hold him off for a minute, maybe more. Hell, maybe I can kill him." He reached into his vest and pulled out a stick of dynamite wrapped in nails with a layer of plastic wrap covering the whole apparatus.

"No, I'm making sure that we all get off this rock," Xena reprimanded as she reached down to pick him up.

Before she could, he swung his AR-15 into line with her face. The implied threat was clear. "I'll only slow you down. It doesn't matter how strong or fast you normally are." He reached into his shirt just below the neckline and snapped away a set of dog tags. Clasping them into her hand he continued, "Make sure that my wife gets these. Please."

"I will. Give 'im Hell."

"That, I can most definitely promise. Now go!"

As they walked off, he lay down with the improvised shrapnel bomb in his right hand and its detonator in his left. As the hunter's heavy footsteps approached, he tensed his hand around the bomb. When he could tell that it was only a stride away, he activated the timer, set for five seconds. It reached down and picked him up by the neck; he shoved the bomb up against the hunter's stomach a second before the former detonated, shredding both of their bellies. The hunter survived, but barely. The IRA soldier was killed instantly.

A half a mile away, the group heard the explosion and stopped. _"__Allah bless his soul, he did it. I mean, he has to have done it, right?_" asked an Arab, a Taliban insurgent.

"_I_ _don't know. But I don't think that we should wait around to find out_," Xena replied, in Arabic, as she turned to continue on. She suddenly stopped and dropped to the ground as she heard a *paff* followed by the twang of twirling wire.

However, the net was not directed at her, as it hit another member of the group, a Tennessean in an orange jumpsuit. His Bowie knife dropped to the ground as he was thrown back against a tree. He groaned, demonstrating amazing pain tolerance, as the net began to tighten and cut into him. Xena rushed up and began trying to pull out the net's anchors, as she knew that the net would only cut apart anything that touched it. She succeeded in ripping out one anchor before she was knocked away by a hunter. She struggled to her feet and began to scurry away. "I'm sorry!" she shouted over her shoulder as she left.

"Wait! Y'all can't jest…" His plea was cut off as a blade entered his gut.

Xena caught back up with the group in a grassy field that smelled of decay. After slowing down to search for a moment, she found the rotting bodies of one hunter and a man whose build suggested an Oriental descent. It was what lay next to the man's body that most caught her attention: an old katana. She examined it carefully, but her fear turned out to be unwarranted. "Not Lejule's," she muttered as the group continued on. A few minutes later, they arrived at the hunters' camp. The detail Xena first noticed was the immense totem near the far end of the camp; and the Predator that was chained to it. She walked up to the hunter and studied a set of scars on his belly. Putting her hand up against his skin, she found that the scars matched her spread fingers perfectly. _"I remember you,"_ she said in Quechua.


	5. Endgame

Chapter 5: Endgame

The Predator looked at her with a look that could only be interpreted as hostility, but she could see a silent plea for help buried deeply in his eyes. Xena quickly swiped the katana through the chains, catching the hunter as he fell.

"Are you sure about letting one of these hunters go free?" asked Grigori.

"This particular Predator and I have a bit of a history. Nothing romantic, mind you." She helped the Predator to his feet and handed him the katana. "Besides, we need a pilot for that ship, don't we?"

The Predator stabbed the katana into the ground, apparently deeming it useless, walked over to and ripped open a cloaked container.

"Hey, tell your buddy that we don't have the time for him to get his fancy gear on." Royce stated with a slightly concerned tone.

Xena sighed and layed a hand on the Predator's shoulder. _"I believe that, due to time constraints, you will have to don your armor on the ship." _The Predator growled and went back to equipping his gear. "He's being stubborn. Keep a watch."

The Predator only needed a minute to fully don all of his equipment, but, just after he had attached his mask, a deafening roar blasted through the camp. The whole group turned to the source of the sound and saw two of the new hunters, one wounded in the gut and being supported by the other. It was the other, as it dropped the wounded one, which caught everyone's attention. This hunter was huge, about nine feet tall, and, if the hunters followed the size relationship rules of reptiles, was female.

Xena looked between the hunter and the Predator and saw him actually shrinking back in terror. She looked at Grigori, who, having unlimbered the Dragunov upon entering the camp, tossed the sniper rifle to her. As she looked over the entire group, the sound of various weapons being cocked told her that everyone agreed that fighting this was to be the last stand for one group. Whichever way the battle went, this hunt would end here. Even the Predator realized this, joining the battle line a few seconds later.

The female hunter looked confused for a second, and then she turned on her targeting system. Xena zeroed in and denied the huntress the chance to achieve a lock-on against anyone by shooting out the targeting lasers' generator. In response, the huntress began rapid-firing her plasma caster without the benefit of targeting, not that she needed it.

The blasts from the caster served their purpose, scattering the huntress's enemies.

The insurgent was the first to recover, popping up over a fallen tree trunk and unleashing a long barrage of 7.62 mm rounds from his AK. A few of them punched into the female's body below the rib cage, but most of them bounced off of the armor high on the chest. She let loose another un-aimed blast from the plasma caster that caught him on the outside of his thigh. As he fell in pain, she extended her arms down and to the side, and a pair of arm blades extended from a sheath on each arm. She charged forward and, before anyone could react, swung one of the blades through the front half of the insurgent's neck.

As his throat poured blood like there was no tomorrow, he managed to squeak out, _"__Hey, infidel. You forgot something._" As he said those words, he pulled out a detonator and flipped open his jacket to reveal the suicide belt that the detonator was attached to. With a feeble, gurgling cackle, he depressed the trigger button. The resulting explosion catapulted the huntress twenty feet.

As she landed, her entire body weight was caught by the plasma caster, which collapsed into a piece of scrap metal the size of a gladius's blade. As she stood up, she ripped away the useless piece of metal and scanned the area. The first two enemies she spotted were Xena and the Predator. The huntress re-extended her arm blades (She had retracted them to prevent their destruction during the landing.) and moved to engage.

The Predator extended his wrist blades, and Xena grabbed the katana out of the ground before the both of them moved to engage the huntress. Xena swung at the huntress, who parried with her arm blade. The Predator swung his wrist blade at the same moment, and it, too, was expertly parried by the other arm blade. The huntress swiped back with both of her blades, which were both parried. They continued the pattern for almost a minute, mixing in kicks and punches occasionally until a spread of buckshot pockmarked the huntress's mask. She crouched down and spun, slashing into both Xena and the Predator well below their guard.

As they stumbled back, she aimed one arm blade at Hans, who was still aiming his Remington at her, and fired, hitting Hans at about the middle-left side of his chest. He looked surprised for a second before he fell to the ground, dead.

Xena, despite the fact that her wounds from the spinning sweep had not fully healed, pushed herself back to her feet and charged back into combat. She swung at the unprepared huntress's side, but she was unable to bring her full strength into the blow, and, thus, the sword was unable to cut deeply enough for a mortal wound. Before she could draw the sword out of the huntress's body, the latter brought her forearm down on the blade, shattering it. Xena went to draw her falcata, but the huntress brought the same arm up in a backhand that threw Xena twenty feet.

The huntress walked over and prepared to take a trophy from her newest opponent, grabbing Xena's neck and raising her arm blade. In a last act of defiance, Xena spit on the huntress's mask. Then, the sharp cracks of two rifle reports slashed the air and a pair of high-powered rifle rounds tore through the huntress's chest. In response, she brought out a shuriken and threw it at the two snipers, slicing both rifles in half, but Grigori and Isabelle managed to dodge and live at the cost of their only weapons. Angered at the fact that she missed, the huntress aimed her remaining arm blade and fired, hitting Grigori in his right shoulder.

Xena, having had enough of a respite to fully heal herself, picked herself up off of the ground and raised the falcata before swinging it into the side of the huntress's helmet, which flew away. Several slashes across the belly and one that cut through the huntress's leg brought her to her knees. Xena grabbed the huntress by the latter's jaws and raised the huntress up to eye level. "You are going to pay for your transgressions, bitch," the werejaguaress growled as she craned the huntress's neck back. The huntress tapped a repeatedly memorized pattern into her left wrist computer as Xena lunged forward and bit down on the huntress's throat, crushing the latter's wind pipe.

As the huntress's body fell to the ground, the beast, flesh still hanging from her jaws, took a moment to recompose herself and catch her breath before she noticed the buzzing beeps that were growing in rapidity. Knowing what would happen, Xena raised her falcata and threw it into the device, splitting it in half. With the destruction of the computer and its attached bomb, the beeping stopped. She dropped to her knees in exhaustion, looked at Royce, Grigori, Isabelle and the Predator, and said, "Now, I think that the plan is to get the fuck off of this planet?"

They all ran to and got aboard the hunters' ship and the Predator set it on a course for Earth. In the passenger hold, Grigori slumped against a wall with his rifle pointing in the air and asked, _"Hey, Xena. Do you have a family waiting for you? Or three?"_

Xena laughed in return, slumping against her own section of wall, and replied, _"Just a fiancée, Jarvin._" At his fallen countenance, she added, "_Hey. You wouldn't want a were-creature mate. They are anti-social at the best of times."_

"No need for the Russian. I speak English."

"Oh." Wanting to diffuse the awkwardness, she asked, "Isabelle. Do you have a family?"

"Never had the time for one."

"Too bad. Royce?"

"You think that I could have a family? No."

"Figures. What about you, Grigori?"

He reached into his left rear cheek pocket and pulled out an old, tattered photograph. "A wife and three kids."

"So, how many families have you had, Xena?" Royce asked.

"One, and another I'm hoping to start if we get back home."

"You never used your immortality to spread your lineage?"

"Never saw a purpose behind doing so. Besides, for the last half of the first millennium, I wasn't on the best terms with humanity."

"How do you mean?" Isabelle asked as she drew her sidearm and raised it about halfway into line with Xena.

"I used to hunt and kill your kind," Xena answered as she buried her head in her paws.

Grigori walked over and raised her chin. Giving her a quick peck, he admonished, "We all have. It is our actions now that determine who we are, not the actions we have taken in prior decades or, in your case, centuries."

"You sounded just like Lejule when you said that."

"Who's Lejule?"

"He is the oldest werewolf in existence. Perhaps you all will get to meet him when we get home."

"I'd rather not meet an aggressive fur ball who'd be as likely to eat me as greet me."

"Lejule's a big softie, Royce. He has made it his solemn vow to never taste human flesh. I'll leave you to make your decision." With that, she got up and walked toward the cockpit of the ship. The door opened as she approached and the Predator turned around in his seat. That was when she noticed that he had had an older wound than the ones he had suffered during the fight with the huntress. _"Anything I can do?"_

He waved his hand dismissively and turned back to the control consol. _"You have done more than most hunters of my clan would do."_

Xena was taken aback. This was the first time she had known of any Predators truly conversing with an Earthling. _"How long have you known my language?"_

"_Since I met you, I have endeavored to master the intricacies of your native tongue."_

"_Not bad for a dozen or so centuries of practice through vocal cords that never evolved for Terran languages."_

"_I do my best."_

"_What do you plan to do when you drop us off at Earth?"_

"_Head home with some shame."_

"_Any chance that you could stay with us on Earth?"_

"_Unthinkable. Were I to try to live among you, I would be permanently dishonored and would, thus, be as an animal to hunt."_

"_But you would have far more allies than you would have at home."_

"_None of the right allies. My decision is made. I will head home after I deposit you in your homes."_

Xena fell silent as she contemplated her options. She finally settled on, _"I hope that you live a long time after your return to your people."_ She patted his shoulder and walked back to the passenger bay to wait out the remainder of the flight.


End file.
